The Somerville Times

a not-so-beautiful pond, but I like the way the leaves
form an arch over the water, the sun slanting through,
making them glow, and on the far side of the pond
we see a swan my husband refers to as “a white fish,”
which makes me think more about the solitary swan
we’d passed earlier who was sitting on the bank—
the way she was grooming herself so conscientiously—
this is her work, after all—corkscrewing her limber
and endless neck under her, nipping one feather,
then another, and then I began to listen to some water
sounds on my meditation app as I looked at the moiré
patterns the wind was making on the actual water,
and the wind was just the wind, but cool on the edges
with a slightly warm core from the warm day, and yes,
the earth is probably dying, and on the radio today
I heard the Colorado River is running out of water
and can maybe be saved if people would only eat
one less hamburger each week, which shouldn’t be
a big deal but is, and I don’t eat hamburger anymore
and live nowhere near Colorado as I once did.
And I don’t know how many more walks like this
we will have together, these our most ordinary walks,
and I’m trying to hold this space as something sacred,
even with a dozen or more cigarette butts littering
the ground under my feet and a lasso of fish wire dangling
from a branch, and if the wire gets into the pond it will
likely strangle a great blue heron or some fish, which
are likely already done for (a signpost says, “This water
may have been contaminated with chemicals”)—which
pisses me off—was it or wasn’t it, and who is minding
this water anyway? Water that nevertheless looks serene
and beautiful under the setting sun. We start walking home
when I notice that the swan we’d seen earlier is now
gliding toward the swan on the far side. And I name
the one swan acceptance and the other swan grief.

— Wendy Drexler